Iconic British bike maker, BSA Motorcycles has come back to life, and the brand was resurrected at a special event in Birmingham in the UK. Classic Legends, part of the Mahindra Group, revived the classic motorcycle brand, and also showcased the first model that will be sold under the BSA name. The BSA Gold Star was originally sold between 1938 and 1963 and was powered by a range of engines between 350 cc and 500 cc. The 2022 BSA Gold Star retains much of the classic lines of the original but power is likely to come from the newly-developed 650 cc single-cylinder DOHC engine.
More details on the new BSA Gold Star will be revealed during the public debut on December 4, 2021, at the Motorcycle Live Show in the UK. The new BSA motorcycle has been designed and developed in the UK and will also be built there, confirmed Anupam Thareja, co-founder, Classic Legends Pvt. Ltd. Thareja also revealed that special attention was given to every detail right from the lines to the font to the tires.
“We’d spend hours, in the end, looking at the font, the size, the color, the shape. How it looks in the day and the night. And all I can say is it went into a dizzy. But what came out of this harmonious chaos is this absolutely stunning, beautiful piece of artwork,” said Thareja.
Classic Legends plans to produce the BSA Gold Star in Birmingham itself, the brand’s original home. Plans for the same were previously disrupted due to the pandemic. The company has already set up a technical center in Coventry to develop motorcycles. The brand is also working on electric offerings at this facility. It was also awarded a 4.6 million pound grant from the UK government for the development of zero-emission motorcycles.
Birmingham Small Arms Company Ltd or BSA was founded in 1861, for the production of firearms. The brand’s motorcycle division was set up in 1903, and the first motorcycle was introduced in 1910. The brand went on to become the largest supplier of motorcycles to the Allied Forces during the Second World War. By the 1950s, BSA was the world’s largest motorcycle maker, with one in every four motorcycles sold worldwide sporting the BSA badge. BSA ceased operations in the 1970s after going into bankruptcy. It was acquired by Classic Legends in 2016.